Weekend Sewing

I finished up the Pineapples on Saturday night. I think these look so cool!

After that was finished up I started to tackle quilting the "Luminary" quilt. I decided to do straight line quilting with my walking foot, and am just echoing around the star. I like the nice clean look this seems to have, and I think the echoes makes a nice accent to the star.

I'm contemplating doing some squiggles or something in the rows that are a little further apart, but I haven't decided yet. I'm also not sure what I'm going to do inside the star - more straight lines, or something else? We'll see...

A Couple More Pineapples

Still working on the paper-pieced pineapples. I've decided this will be a smaller quilt, more suited for a wall hanging, so it'll be 9 blocks total. I have 4 more to do, and I'm starting to run low on the right scrap colors! I'm loving how bright and crisp these are looking on the white background, and it'll be fun to play around with placement once all 9 blocks are done.

Recipe Time: Valentines Truffles

I decided to make my team at work chocolate truffles for Valentines Day. I took a community ed class on truffle making a year ago, and I discovered how easy and delecious it is to make them yourself. I also went full on Martha Stewart and made little boxes and tags to package them with, and they turned out adorable! Here's what I do:

Chocolate Truffles - makes about 24

• 8 oz. good quality chocolate (dark, milk, whatever your preference is)
• 1/3 c. cream
• Depending on your preference, extra chocolate to dip them in, or fun stuff to roll them in (nuts, toasted coconut, bashed up candy, cookies, cocoa powder...whatever) 

1. Melt the chocolate in a microwave safe container in your microwave at 50% power for 1 minute. Stir and repeat. 
2.  Add the cream and let sit for 2-3 minutes.
3. Stir, and if the chocolate still isn't melted microwave for an additional 15-30 seconds until it's all melted. Keep a close eye on everything while you're microwaving. If you burn your chocolate, the party's over.
4. Put your chocolate mixture in the fridge for 1 hour, or until solid enough to scoop
5. Using a small melon baller, or a teaspoon, scoop the chocolate into approx 1 inch balls, and quickly roll them between your palms until they are nicely shaped. You want to try and minimize the amount of rolling you do so as not to start melting the chocolate. Just try and work quickly. 
6. This next part depends on what you want to do - if you're dipping your truffles in chocolate, put them in the freezer for 10-15 minutes to firm up again after all the scooping and rolling. If not, proceed to the next step!
7. If you're not dipping your truffles, then roll them around in your toppings, place on a wax paper covered try and chill until serving time. 
8. If you're dipping your truffles, than melt your chocolate, stab a truffle with a toothpick, and dip away. Place on a wax paper covered sheet to harden, then chill until serving

The fun part about truffle making is that you can get really creative. You can experiment with different types of chocolate, you can add flavorings, you can dip them in chocolate, then roll them in stuff, then drizzle them with more chocolate! You can dip and sprinkle and drizzle in any combination to your heart's content! In the picture above, I did one chocolate-covered one, one rolled in dutch-process cocoa, one dipped in chocolate, then rolled in bashed up malted milk balls, and one rolled in bashed up Andes mints, then drizzled with more chocolate. 

Inside Out Pineapples

I've been having fun with a new project! After my bin of solid colored scraps wouldn't shut, I knew it was time to start using some of them up, and I've wanted to make this block called "Inside Out Pineapple" for a long time.

I started by dumping out all my scraps into a big heap and then sub-dividing them into color groups, which was fun in and of itself!

This block is paper-pieced, and made up of 4 quadrants, each with 20 pieces...so they're time-consuming and fiddly, but the results are so cool!

I'm doing each block in two colors and reversing the focus color - so in the block below, the navy is the focus in part of the block, and then the lighter blue is in the other half. I think it adds to the interest and almost creates a bit of an optical illusion.

I've made 5 of these so far and am going to do 4 more. I'm definitely making a dent in my scraps too, which is the whole point!

In other quilty news, I finished the top to the "Luminary" quilt and have it basted and ready to be quilted, so that's my next project after I finish these Inside Out Pineapples.

Luminary

I finished up the North and South top, and I think it turned out really well. It's also big - bigger than I thought it would be, even though I knew the measurements said 70 x 88. I was expecting it to be more throw-sized...it's not. But that's OK!

With that one in the bag, it was time to start something new! I've had my eye on this "Luminary" pattern from Alison Glass for awhile now, because it looked so fun. It totally WAS! First you start out by cutting fabric in random strips.

Then you sew the strips into sets, then you cut those apart into more random strips, and sew them back together again into a Lone Star pattern. Looks at all those tiny pieces!

I loved the improvisational nature of this, and the fact that there were no real measurements to follow was liberating. It took me no time to get my Lone Star together, and during this week I'll be working on getting the background pieces parts sewn on. I'm using a dark blue-grey linen.